


Paint It Red

by cyanspica



Series: Death of a Nation [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda, The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No American Revolution, Angst, Character Death, Cordyceps Brain Infection, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Outbreak Day, Past Thomas Jefferson/Angelica Schuyler - Freeform, Politician James Madison, Politician Thomas Jefferson, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25270597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanspica/pseuds/cyanspica
Summary: The higher you're flying, the harder the fall. The morning the world ends, Jefferson's flying as high up as any one person can go.
Relationships: Thomas Jefferson/James Madison
Series: Death of a Nation [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1797781
Comments: 13
Kudos: 91





	Paint It Red

**Author's Note:**

> While this can be read as a stand-alone, it makes most sense read after chapter five of the main fic in this series, Death of a Nation.

Well before the crack of dawn, Jefferson wakes up. Most days, there's nothing he'd rather do than hit snooze, drag out another few minutes of sleep; today isn't most days.

“Jemmy,” he murmurs to the man slotted flush against his chest. "Baby, _m_ _on bonheur_ , wake up.”

Madison makes a sleepy sound in response and buries his face deeper into the crook of Jefferson’s neck. It’s a deviation from the norm: for all he hates being woken up unexpectedly, Madison handles mornings just fine. Then again, it's so brutally early that it's not a stretch to call it night. Still, they were careful to time it out so they could clock a good six, seven hours of rest.

It’s a miracle Jefferson was able to sleep at all. Had they stayed at the hotel up in Philly with everyone else, he undoubtedly wouldn’t have. Of course, the price of spending the night at Monticello is that they have to brave the five-hour drive to Philly at five AM, but it’s not an awful trade-off for a few hours of sleep. Jefferson always sleeps better at Monticello—especially now that the renovations are finished.

For the first time in his life, Monticello feels like home.

After today, it _will_ be home.

Jefferson’s mouth twitches in a smile that's all too bright for this time of day.

“James,” Jefferson tries again, pressing a kiss to the top of his partner’s head.

“Thomas?” Madison murmurs after a few seconds, voice thick from sleep. “Mm. Didn’t hear the alarm.” 

“Won’t go off for another ten minutes. Woke up on my own.”

“So start getting ready. You take twice as long.” Madison rolls to his side and tugs the sheets away, burying himself beneath them. “Get me up when you’re out of the shower.”

Jefferson scoffs in indignation but slides out of bed anyways. He stretches leisurely in a way he knows draws attention his broad chest, well-sculpted shoulders, chiseled torso, and he pretends he doesn't notice Madison's eyes flick open to watch, appreciative as they always are. Feigning ignore, Jefferson stands and pads to the bathroom. He’s still sore from the night before but in a pleasant way, and it’s nothing a hot shower can’t fix.

Jefferson washes up, goes through his morning routine, emerges from the bathroom after half an hour. Madison is thankfully fully up now, sitting on the side of the bed. Upon seeing Jefferson, he smiles despite his lingering tiredness. He’s always so damn relaxed this early in the morning—open, unguarded, unreservedly in love. As the day goes on, Madison's defenses mount as the need to protect their privacy grows. Always, he goes from openly in love to merely being outwardly tolerant, indulgent, cooperative. Jefferson does something similar, of course: a necessary evil for the sake of their careers—or so it used to be.

But in the mornings, Madison is completely his—no eyes to hide from, no reputations to protect. Only he gets this side of Madison: the side that’s sleepy but smiling and drowning in a borrowed nightshirt. The domesticity of it all fills Jefferson’s chest with something he can’t find the words for.

Any other day, he’d climb back into bed—but today is the most important day of their careers and possibly the most important day of their personal lives too.

Not that Madison knows that last part yet, of course.

“Good morning, baby,” Jefferson tells him, leaning down for a kiss.

The kiss starts to swing in a decidedly less chaste direction after a few seconds, but Madison pulls away, regret splashed clear across his face.

“Mm. We’re on a tight enough schedule as is,” he explains, standing and heading to the bathroom.

As much as Jefferson wants to protest, Madison’s right.

 _Tonight,_ he thinks to console himself, _we’ll have all the time in the world._

Jefferson finds the clothes he’s laid out the night before. He’s picked out his favorite suit, of course, the one that gets broken out only for graduations, inaugurations, and successfully passed legislation. It's three-pieces, two-toned—amethyst and brilliant magenta—and, naturally, one of a kind. There’ll be plenty of suits onstage with a cut and make as classy as his, but few that’re half as flashy, which is how he likes it.

It’s what he’s going to wear to his wedding, he knows. His hand slips into his inner coat, and he thumbs over the ring inside. His reflection smiles back, uncharacteristically dreamy.

Another thing for later—there are inevitably crises that’ve sprung up overnight that need to be dealt with now. Jefferson pulls out his phone to check. In his messages, he finds an assortment of last minute questions, disasters, and demands.

_John Adams: Thomas, my assistant forgot my damned tie. Please loan me one of yours. I’ll be wearing a navy suit. And, please, for God’s sake, do NOT pick something that looks like a failed prototype of the seventies._

_Charles Lee: Jefferson, I need you to revise article seven, section twelve of my speech by eleven. Sooner would be preferred._

_Philip Schuyler: Good morning, Mister Secretary. Can you clarify today’s itinerary? Will I be speaking at the post-inauguration press conference?_

_Samuel Adams: I bet money that you’re going to wear the purple suit. You know the one. Don’t let me down, man._

_George Washington: Thomas, please come quickly. The media is breathing down my neck. I need Madison to make a press statement, and I need your briefing. With the power vested in me as the Ambassador to England, I’ll pardon you for any speeding tickets. I’ll send you a damn police escort if it'll help any. Just be fast. I'm approaching my wit's end, and it's hardly five in the morning._

Jefferson replies as Madison showers, looks up when he emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later.

“What tie should I wear?”

“Mm. Something floral—the blue silk one.”

Jefferson digs through his ties, starts to fear he’s left the one he’s looking for in one of his city apartments in New York or Philadelphia or Charleston or any of the other dozen cities where he has a place—but he finds it tucked beneath another tie.

It’ll be nice to fully move into Monticello. They’ll still keep most of their apartments, but they’ll at least be able to get all their important things in one place. Of course, it’s more of a problem for Madison than for Jefferson; legally, Madison still lives an hour upstate. But once they officially move in together, there’ll finally be much less frantic searching for laptop chargers and dress shoes and briefcases. Madison can finally reunite his collection of meticulously color-coordinated ties.

“Adams’ assistant fucked up and forgot his tie, apparently,” Jefferson says as he shuffles through Madison’s collection. He picks out something red and silk and plain but stylish. “If he didn’t have a headache before then, he does now. How many Advil do you think he’s taken today so far?”

“That depends. Which Adams are we discussing?”

“John.”

“Then he's probably halfway through a bottle.” Madison checks his watch. “By the time we get there, I imagine he’ll need a new one.”

“Mm. I’ll grab one from the medicine cabinet just in case.”

“Well, if he doesn’t need any more, I’m sure Washington will appreciate some,” Madison wryly replies, withdrawing his phone and taking a look at the accumulated messages. He sighs, raising a hand to rub at his temples. “I'm certain I will.”

“Yeah,” Jefferson mutters, glancing down at the five new messages notifications he’s accumulated in the past minute. “Fuck me. That makes two of us.”

Jefferson takes the extra-strength bottle, doses up before they even leave the house.

And still, the ghost of a smile refuses to leave his face.

* * *

They take Jefferson’s politics car—his newly-purchased, specially designed Cadillac Escalade—and start the trip. Jefferson’s clever about it all; he’s planned out the entire day down to the last detail.

As he starts the car, the first opera he took Madison to more than a dozen years ago queues up, and its first notes come through the speakers.

“Oh,” Madison remarks fondly, reaching over to turn up the volume. “This is—”

“ _La bohème,”_ Jefferson finishes, proud.

Madison’s face is overtaken by reminiscence.

“That was a pleasant evening,” he says, half-caught in the memory.

“Only pleasant?” Jefferson asks, affronted. “I spent hundreds of dollars on those tickets.”

Madison looks over to him, mouth twisting into a dry smile.

“You say that like you earned any of that money.”

“Sure I earned it. It was part of my allowance.”

“I don’t think you have a concept of how much most people’s allowances are.”

“Oh, and you do? James Madison, firstborn son of a multimillionaire big-name politician?”

Madison concedes begrudgingly—meaning that he merely pretends he hasn’t heard what Jefferson’s said. Their conversation dies out for a while as they listen to the opera play on in the comfortable silence. Gradually, as they near, they shift into their political personas. The morning’s intimate domesticity is abandoned. Madison goes through both of their phones' messages, and, together, they form and practice plans of attack to address the dozen disasters that’ve sprung up on their drive. Madison rehearses speech-points for the afternoon, takes cracks at phrasings and anticipates which questions to avoid. Jefferson grills him like a reporter would until he’s rock-solid on his responses—and then Madison returns the favor.

Before long, they’ve pulled up to their designated meeting point with the rest of Washington’s Cabinet—an expensive five-star hotel a half hour drive from downtown. They park in a row of identical black cars with dark-tinted windows, and Jefferson kills the ignition. For a moment, they sit, making no moves to leave.

After today, things will never be the same.

“You and me against the world, Jemmy,” Jefferson finally says, the familiar phrase falling easily from his mouth.

The words are old and familiar between them, mean just as much as any _I love you_ and more. There's a reason why those are the words Jefferson had engraved into the ring in his pocket.

Jefferson turns his head, smiling in the way he saves for Madison--and Madison smiles back, leans forwards until their foreheads press together.

“Always,” Madison promises, giving Jefferson the response they've both come to expect.

They stay still, preserving the moment to posterity.

And then Madison pulls away, presses one last kiss to Jefferson’s lips—the last kiss they’ll share before it all.

They head inside.

As soon as the door slides open, they’re greeted by pure, unabashed chaos. Everyone in the overcrowded lobby is politically affiliated, although Jefferson couldn’t name most of them with a gun to his head.

But more pressingly than that, everyone is apparently half a second away from losing their damn minds. People shout over one another, congregate in groups, pass around three-inch binders and stacks of paper. There are at least a dozen people in Jefferson's immediate view that are one step away from crying, their lips trembling almost comically as they try to keep it together. Phones ring incessantly over the roar of everyone's voices; hotel staff hovers anxiously around them all, looking vaguely terrified by the scene before them.

“Oh, so we’re really using the term professional loosely today, huh?” Jefferson murmurs under his breath to coax a smirk out of a visibly nauseated Madison.

“Madison!” someone shouts. “Thank God you’re here. We’ve got—"

“May Christ spare me,” Madison mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Jefferson bids him farewell, resists the urge to press a kiss to his mouth— _soon,_ he reminds himself. He looks around the wildly disorganized room, searching for someone else with two spare brain cells to rub together— _there._ Jefferson slides and pushes around hapless politicians until he’s beside John Adams, who’s currently busy tearing into two terrified-looking Representatives from some of the western colonies.

“—and you _talked to the press without consulting me?_ The _Vice-Ambassador?”_

“I brought your tie,” Jefferson cuts in, sliding himself between Adams and the Representatives, giving them the chance to slip away. He’s not all that sympathetic towards the two of them, but he knows how long-winded Adams gets when he’s good and pissed off, and Jefferson’s not inclined to stand idly by for fifteen minutes until Adams yells himself hoarse or into a stage-three migraine. “Plain red—good enough?”

Adams doesn’t spare time on formalities—he looks vaguely irritated back towards the Representatives, who've used the interruption to scamper away—and then takes the tie Jefferson offers him. He rubs the silk between his fingers, then nods, satisfied. Some of the tension in his shoulders alleviated, he finally officially greets Jefferson with a twitch of his mouth. On him, it’s the equivalent of a broad grin and a crushing hug.

“I assume I have Madison to thank for this?” he asks with a nod towards the tie. Jefferson feigns indignation in response, but Adams knows him much too well to buy it. “How was the drive?”

“Long as fuck. Got stuck in traffic half an hour out—some kind of accident by the highway? Couldn’t tell. Looked bloody. Didn’t want to look too close.”

“Well, better to be out there than in here.” Adams scrubs a hand over his face and sighs, looking absolutely exhausted. The dark circles under his eyes will need more than a little makeup before they go onstage. “Give me some good news.” His eyes flick around the room as he checks that no one’s listening in. Once he's satisfied, he quietly asks, “Is everything set?”

Aside from Washington, John Adams is the only person in the Cabinet that knows about Jefferson and Madison, about where Jefferson will be tonight—and only then because Washington couldn’t convince Adams to move the inauguration three days sooner than initially planned until Jefferson ran interference, gave Adams the real reason a week earlier. The memory plays in his head, sends a flicker of a smile across his face.

_“Look, the fourth is me and Madison’s anniversary,” he admitted after fifteen minutes of arguing and getting nowhere._

_“And?” Adams asked, unimpressed. “Don’t you have two anniversaries?”_

_“I—a_ _re you talking about the anniversary_ before _our breakup?” Jefferson replied, incredulous._

_“Yes. What else would I be talking about?”_

_“Oh, for—look, I’m going to propose.”_

_Indignant, Adams finally looked up from the thick stack of papers on his desk._

_“That’s what this is about? Coordinating the country’s Independence Day to your fucking anniversary?”_

_“Uh, yes?” Jefferson's brows shot up. “I think it’s pretty fuckin’ romantic.”_

_“I spend my entire day corralling idiots that wouldn’t know not to shove a gun up their ass, and yet, somehow, you still manage to be the biggest thorn in my side. It's a goddamned God-given talent. How the hell do you do it, Thomas?”_

_“Yeah, yeah, I'm obnoxious—whatever. That’s a yes, though, right? You’re gonna let Washington move it now?”_

_Adams sighed, scrubbed hands over his exhausted face._

_“Regrettably.” He shook his head. “Yes—yes, I’ll do it. Now, remind me why we’re friends?”_

Point of the matter is that it pays to be on Adams’ good side, as small and hard to find as it is.

“Of course everything’s good to go,” Jefferson reassures him, flashing a brilliant smile. “How ‘bout you? Prepared to be a groomsman?”

“So long as you don’t force me into something hideously purple.”

“Not _all_ purple—I’m wearing all purple, so y’all can’t. It’d be like wearing white to a normal wedding.”

“A normal wedding…” Adams repeats, despair in his voice as picks up on the implication that their wedding will, in fact, nor be normal. And the big wedding won't be, of course. The smaller one might be: Madison will want something much smaller, much more person, and much less ostentatious than Jefferson, but they’ll oblige each other, have a ceremony to cater to each of their tastes. All the better for Adams to enjoy, Jefferson figures. “Christ. Will there be an open bar?”

“Tone down the killjoy on the day of, won’t you?” Jefferson complains _—_ not that he means it. Despite the exterior, John's easily one of his best friends, and certainly the oldest. His equally oldest friend is, not coincidentally, also an Adams. “Where’s Sam?” Jefferson asks with a glance around.

“Caught up in Boston,” Adams explains as he loops the tie around his neck, knots it neatly. “As he so eloquently put it: _there’s a political shitstorm going on with the Redcoats, and I’m the only one competent enough to sail us through it.”_

Jefferson snorts a laugh, though he’s admittedly a little disappointed his other friend in the Adams family couldn’t make it. No matter—Jefferson and John are both due in Boston on Wednesday as part of Washington’s inauguration tour, and the three of them can all catch up then.

“Well, how’s our shitstorm going on here?” Jefferson asks. “Any emergencies I need to deal with?”

“With you and Madison here, the mean intelligence is the room is much higher than it was two minutes ago. Madison and I will get it under control. Go find Washington—you have his briefing ready?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Last I spoke to him, he was still upstairs. Room 444.”

“Godspeed?”

“Godspeed.”

With a gruff clap on the shoulder, Adams sends him off.

* * *

No one answers when Jefferson knocks.

“Washington?” he calls—again, no answer.

Jefferson scrubs a hand over his face; finding Washington in the middle of this shitshow will be like finding a needle in a silo. He pulls out his Blackberry, looks for Washington’s number—but a call flashes on his phone screen before he can hit dial. He almost drops his phone in surprise. The call doesn’t surprise him. The caller? That does.

He debates answering, weighs his options carefully—but finally slides to accept the call.

“This is Thomas Jefferson,” he says, cautious, guarded.

“Thomas? I’m glad you picked up,” a voice comes through.

He pauses, a renewed wave of surprise hitting him.

“Angelica?” he asks.

He knew answering that it was her, of course, but that wasn’t a guarantee it wasn’t an accidental call or someone else calling him from her phone.

After all, they don’t talk often. In hindsight, their breakup was inevitable, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. In a life where things panned out just a shade different, the ring in his pocket could’ve just as easily been for her.

Jefferson pauses.

“I can’t talk for long,” he replies, and he’s glad it’s the truth, because it gives him an easy out.

“Of course,” she says. “Don’t worry—it’ll be quick. I just called to tell you congratulations.”

“Oh,” Jefferson says, shifting on his feet. He paces around the hall, spins on the heels of his Louboutins when he reaches the end and starts towards the other side. “Well, uh, thanks.”

There’s a long silence, something that's unfamiliar between the two of them.

They were never short for things to say back when they were together.

“Well, what are your plans for the evening, Mister Secretary of Settlements?” Angelica finally asks.

And even though it’s undoubtedly more out of politeness than anything else, that, at least, brings a smile on Jefferson’s face. _Secretary of Settlements_ —his official title after today.

Except he likes the ring of _Secretary of State_ better.

(And luckily for him, there’ll be more than enough opportunity to change it).

“Mm, after the inauguration? Press conference. Will you be there?”

“No. I leave the political reporting to everyone and anyone else,” she laughs. “I’m watching in New York with my sisters and a few friends. You know a couple of them, actually—John Laurens and his boyfriend Hamilton are hosting. Housewarming thing for their new apartment.”

“Wait, hold _on—Hamilton?_ Like, the Hamilton that went MMA on Henry Laurens’ ass back in April?” Jefferson asks, genuine delight flooding his voice. He laughs hard at the memory. “Shit, text me his address. I’ll send him a fucking fruit basket.”

“God, _please_ don’t encourage him. He doesn’t need it.”

“Oh, but there are _so_ many people I want him to punch.”

“Knowing both your politics, I’m sure he’ll be one of them in another four or five years.”

Jefferson laughs, and like that, the years-long tension between them seems to evaporate into thin air. At once, it strikes him how much he’s missed her—not in the romantic sense, not like he did back when he still wanted to work things out, figure out how to make their diagonally-directed lives align—but as a friend. He’s missed their friendship, their shared loathing of so many people, their inside jokes and laughter and late-night talks. Jefferson doesn’t know if there’s friendship left between them to be salvaged—but he wants to try.

“I’ll be in New York next week for a meeting with the legislature,” Jefferson says, leaving enough of a suggestion in his voice for Angelica to take the conversation whichever way she wants.

There’s a pause.

“Well, I’ll be in town. I could show you my favorite lunch spot.”

“You know, I think I’d like that.” More empty plans. “Let me get you my assistant’s number. He’s probably scheduled me to be at a dozen places already.”

“You have an assistant?” Angelica asks, playful. “You’ve really made it, huh?”

“Yeah,” Jefferson laughs. “Guess I have.”

* * *

Today will be the worst day of Jefferson’s life.

It won’t be the worst moment—the next years will bring horrors not even the darkest corners of his current imagination could conjure—but the whole of it all will make it the worst day.

After today, the second worst day of his life will look like a goddamn Sweet Sixteen.

(The second worst day is actually, of course, the day in college when Madison dumped him, unceremoniously broke his heart over a twenty-second phone call—but Jefferson pushes that day out of his mind, pretends it never happened. Until tonight's over, he thinks of the worst day of his life as the day that Washington finds out.)

Just over two years ago—2009—finds Jefferson in his office in the Representatives building. It’s past eleven at night, and, except for him, everyone’s long since gone home. He’s diligent, disciplined, has stayed late to pore over news articles and early predictions, stayed to think strategy and to figure out where to focus their efforts.

Last week, Washington stood in front of the country and announced his candidacy for the Ambassador to the English with an independence flag pin on his lapel.

The future is rich with opportunities. There’s the potential for freedom, the potential for the culmination of what he’s worked towards for years, and—perhaps mostly selfishly—the potential for a big fucking promotion.

 _If_ Washington wins.

Jefferson’s going to make sure Washington wins. Washington will win, even if it means Jefferson’s the last person left working in the office every night for the next two years.

And so everyone’s gone home for the night today, but Jefferson works on.

Correction: everyone has gone home except for him and—oh.

Shit.

The door flies open, and Jefferson suddenly remembers that they carpooled from Madison's apartment this morning. Jefferson said he’d be at the car in ten minutes about—oops.

“I’ve been waiting for _two hours,”_ Madison tells him, irritated and tired.

“Why didn’t you come and get me sooner?” Jefferson asks, tearing himself away from his monitor even though he’s itching to finish reading the editorial onscreen.

“Because I _fell_ _asleep_ waiting.”

Jefferson scrubs a hand over his face.

“Fuck, Jemmy, I’m sorry,” he apologizes, guilty. “Look—I’ll make it up to you.”

Madison considers him a long few seconds, and the anger in his eyes shifting to something different but just as hot. He turns to shut the door and bolts the lock shut, turning around with his mouth twisted up in a way that makes Jefferson’s brows rise.

“May as well start now, then,” Madison remarks, voice light as he rounds on Jefferson. Hands on Jefferson’s shoulders slide him out of the chair onto the floor, and Madison takes up residence in his seat, eyes dark as his thumb slides over Jefferson’s bottom lip, nudges his mouth open, mouth twisting into a faintly wicked smile. “Well?”

And, oh, Jefferson’s good at asking for that kind of forgiveness.

It’s all good, all hands in his hair, dark eyes watching him, throaty encouragements, and a knock on the door— _hold the fuck up_ _,_ Jefferson thinks, abruptly pulled from the moment, _god, please, fuck no._

“Jefferson?” Washington’s voice rings out. “May I come in? Sorry to bother you so late, but I noticed your car was still in the lot. I have an idea to run by you regarding my polling numbers in the west.”

Jefferson and Madison both seem to decide that staying death-still is their best bet. There are a few beats of silence where Jefferson is just stupid enough to think Washington’s gone away but—

“Christ,” his voice mutters a second later. “Would it kill you to turn off the lights, Thomas?”

There’s a jangle of keys, and—Jefferson scrambles into the hollowed space beneath his desk while Madison rushes to look semi-presentable, and then the door swings open.

(Jefferson, thankfully doesn’t have to face Washington., but the story that Madison tells him later with his face buried in his hands is this: Washington opens the door, spends a second looking for the light switch—then notices Madison in Jefferson’s chair. There’s half a second where his campaign’s in danger, not because of any contenders, but because Washington almost has a fucking heart attack).

 _"Shit!”_ Washington swears, something he does so rarely that it shows just how caught off-guard he is. "Madison?” Washington asks once he recovers, a note of confusion clear in his voice. “Is Jefferson here? I am in… Jefferson’s office, aren’t…”

At this point, Washington trails off with a cough.

(Washington’s eyes are on the desk, Madison recounts, right to where Jefferson discarded his tie hours ago. It’s bright fuchsia, printed with a viciously loud paisley pattern, undeniably his.

Then—regrettably—Washington’s eyes flick up to Madison’s neck, where Madison’s plain navy tie is loosely tied around his neck.

And, finally, Washington’s eyes drop to Jefferson’s desk, more than big enough to conceal a person beneath it and to half a dozen other clues between—Jefferson’s briefcase by the side of the desk, the locked door, the empty office behind them, Madison’s obvious dishevelment and his even-more-than-obvious absolute mortification).

Washington awkwardly clears his throat.

“I’ll send you an email,” he says, and then he beats a hasty retreat.

He says _you_ , and he has to be looking at Madison when he says it, because Jefferson’s still crammed under the desk—only he sends it to Jefferson, and to Jefferson alone.

* * *

Jefferson returns to the lobby, which is somehow more chaotic than before, and weaves his way through until he finds Madison speaking to people Jefferson recognizes only vaguely. Madison spots him, excuses himself from his current conversation, quickly works back towards him.

“Have you found Washington?” Madison asks.

And at the mention of his name, Washington sweeps in from the far end of the room. Jefferson and Madison can’t make him out—but they know it’s him, because the volume of the babbling in the lobby increases tenfold, joined by cries of Washington’s name. Jefferson and Madison push their way through to where the voices are loudest, and there Washington is—tall, broad, a vision in a crisply cut black suit with a tasteful flag pin—the independence flag pin he so oft wears—fixed to his lapel. To someone who knows him as well as Jefferson, Washington looks a little frazzled, a little manic. Relief splashes onto his face when he spots them both.

“Jefferson! Madison! You’re here—fantastic,” Washington exclaims, cutting through the crowd.

Washington’s phone rings as he stops in front of them. He pulls it out, barely glancing at the screen long enough for either of them to catch the name of the caller—and, without saying a word, Washington answers, then immediately hangs up. Jefferson blinks, brows lifting.

“I apologize for prying, but did you just hang up on the king?” Madison asks, voice slow and incredulous.

“Yes. For the fortieth time today. Consider yourself ordered to do the same if he tries to talk to you,” Washington replies, irritable. He glances around, lowers his voice when he tells them, “I’m certain he’s got a man in the Cabinet somewhere. He knows more than he should.”

“What, he knows what today is?” Jefferson asks, shifting on his feet; the thought of Redcoats stopping the show before it starts doesn’t sit well with him.

“Not specifics, but he knows we’re not here for a normal inauguration,” Washington replies. His phone rings again—this time he checks the name and actually answers. “Martha? Yes, I’m in Philadelphia. Yes, I brought my speech notes. Yes, my suit was ironed. Yes—yes. No, I’m fine. Thank you. I’ll see you at Mount Vernon on Sunday. Thank you.”

“How’s your wife?” Madison asks, polite, conversational—he excels at small talk, is able to coax even Washington into casual conversation.

“Martha's well. Worried for my blood pressure.”

“And how _is_ your blood pressure?” Jefferson cuts in, brows arched.

Washington looks over their shoulders, spots someone he doesn’t want to talk to.

“Rising by the minute,” he mutters, turning and motioning for them to walk with him. “Sometimes I find myself preferring the trenches to politics,” Washington wryly tells them before straightening up, jumping to business. “Alright, then. Madison, once we’re done talking, I need you to go outside and deliver a brief statement to the press—emphasis on _brief._ Just say whatever the hell will make them back off until tonight. Now, will the Constitution be ready for our Friday address to the nation?”

“Of course, sir.”

“And Jefferson, I trust that you’re prepared for your speech today?”

“Only been practicing since I was five,” Jefferson replies, flashing a white smile.

Washington laughs and claps him on the shoulder.

“Great—now, you have my briefing prepared?”

Jefferson delivers it, pauses every so often to let Madison intersperse his own commentary, to let Washington ask questions. They’re bombarded with dozens of interruptions every ten steps, making what should be a ten-minute affair take nearly half an hour. Jefferson checks his watch when he finishes—fifteen minutes until the motorcade moves out to the inauguration site.

“Fantastic,” Washington tells them, pausing to answer a question from some fraught sound technician. “Alright, Madison, before you go, I hate to burden you with anything else, but start planning a speech detailing my stances on illegal substances. It looks as though there’s a bad batch of hallucinogens going around—scattered reports of unprovoked attacks in a handful of east coast cities, Philadelphia included. I trust you're up to the task without needing any hand-holding.” Washington glances down at his watch, shakes his head. “We’re on in half an hour. Christ, and I still have a hundred cues to run through.” He moves away, then looks over his shoulder as if remembering something. “Oh, Jefferson. Walk with me. One last thing to discuss.”

Jefferson waves a goodbye to Madison, then has to run half a dozen steps to catch up to Washington’s rushed, long gait.

“Sir?” he asks, but Washington doesn’t answer until they’re a good distance away.

“Is everything alright? With the…”

He trails off, raising pointed brows.

“Of course,” Jefferson replies, catching on. “I’m driving us down to the coast after the press conference. Even if we hit traffic, I’ve timed it out to make sure we catch the sunset.”

“Good. I’ll cut the press conference short if it looks like it’ll run long—and I suspect they’ll try to make it run long.” Washington sighs, tired. “As thrilled as I am that this day’s come, I have to admit I’m ready for it to be over. I haven’t had a night of solid sleep since well before the election.”

Jefferson scrubs a hand over his face.

“Fuck, I know what that feels like. But home stretch now, hm?”

“Home stretch,” Washington agrees, managing a smile that makes it to his eyes.

Jefferson smiles back, white and flashy.

There aren’t many friends—and certainly not many bosses—willing to move the timetable of an entire inauguration three days sooner just so one of their employees can declare independence on their anniversary. There are certainly fewer that’d then give them the last half day off to propose. And there's certainly no one else Jefferson would rather have at the helm of their new country.

Jefferson really is lucky in all facets of his life—friendship, romantic, political, and otherwise.

“Well, if there's nothing else, I’ve got to check in with the sound system managers,” Washington tells him.

“Of course,” Jefferson says. “Come to dinner at Monticello this weekend. You haven’t gotten a chance to see the renovations yet—and I’ve just acquired a fantastic bottle of _Liber Pater.”_

“You make a compelling offer, Thomas.”

“Don’t I always?” Jefferson asks, earning himself a snort. Someone waves a hand at him, tries to make frantic eye contact. Jefferson sighs, massages his temples, and drags the bottle of Advil out of his pocket. Washington's brows raise, but he puts out a hand, and the two of them throw back another dose of Advil together. Jefferson straightens, starts to move away. “Well, then, Ambassador Washington—I’ll see you on the other side of the batshit crazy.”

One last time, Washington smiles at him.

“To the other side!” he calls after Jefferson.

Those are the last words they’ll exchange: _to the other side._

Today, only one of them makes it there. 

* * *

“Good news,” Madison murmurs to him in the car on the way to the venue. “I asked to switch spots with Philip Schuyler. He accepted, so I’ll be next to you while Washington speaks.”

Jefferson’s eyes flick to the other people in the car—John Adams, Baron von Steuben, Benjamin Franklin, the driver—and when he’s sure no one’s looking, he rubs his thumb across the back of Madison’s knuckles. Delight fills him when he thinks of how, not long from now, he won’t have to check that no one’s watching. It probably wouldn’t matter to the people in the car, of course—Jefferson’s friends with all of them save for the driver, but the point holds.

“Almost showtime. Will you feed me my lines if I forget?” Jefferson murmurs to Madison, shooting him a lopsided smirk.

“I’ve heard you rehearse no less than a thousand times,” he replies, but there’s something gentle and soft in his eyes that betrays all the things he’d rather say. “You’ll do fantastic, Thomas.”

John Adams rolls his eyes in the next seat over, crotchety as ever.

The car pulls through blocked-off streets to the back of the stage, and no sooner are they all out of the car than are they swarmed by sound technicians, fitted with microphones, coached on where to stand, when to move, where to look. Jefferson takes it all in stride, but even in all his unending confidence, he’s endlessly aware that this is the single most important moment of his career to date—maybe the most important moment he’ll _ever_ have in his career.

And it’s certainly, certainly, a much bigger crowd than he's used to.

That isn’t to say he hasn’t been at big rallies, hasn’t made speeches to enormous throngs of people. He worked tirelessly on Washington’s campaign, attended every major rally the man held since he first announced his candidacy, has even spoken at a healthy majority of them. But this—this isn’t a city of people, or a state. This is the entire country.

(The entirety of what’ll be _their_ country).

Jefferson drags in a sharp inhale, meeting Madison’s gaze from the corner of his eyes as they’re fitted with microphones. Madison’s cool as ever, unaffected, entirely impassive—but he thrives less under the spotlight than Jefferson does, and Jefferson can read between the lines, see the tenser-than-usual set of his shoulders. Madison catches his gaze; Jefferson smiles warmly, reassuringly.

“Thomas!” a deeply French-accented voice cries, delighted. No sooner than has Jefferson turned around is Lafayette pressing two kisses of greeting to his cheeks, warmly gripping both his shoulders. “It’s been too long!”

“Uh, it’s barely been a week,” Jefferson replies, always a little taken aback at the sheer energy Lafayette packs into every word, every motion of his hand.

“As I said—too long!” Lafayette lets him go and steps back. “I am filled with much excitement for your grand speech. I’ve spent many hours reviewing your Declaration. _Magnifique!_ Perhaps there will come a day when you and I may write something similar for France, yes?”

Jefferson gives Lafayette a once-over, tries to catch up to his younger brother’s breakneck pace; Lafayette’s dressed just as ostentatiously, fitted in a crimson velvet suit better suited for the red carpet than for Washington’s inauguration—but Jefferson’s not exactly one to talk.

(It never stops freaking Jefferson out how similar they are: how despite their estranged childhoods, they mirror each other perfectly in almost everything: looks, dress, dedication to their countries. Sometimes it seems like the only difference between them is that Lafayette just happened to be dumped in France, not in boarding schools and summer camps and anywhere else children are placed to be ignored like Jefferson).

“At any ways,” Lafayette continues, “my superiors in France are biting at the chomp—” _Chomping at the bit,_ Jefferson thinks, though he doesn’t correct the man aloud. “—to hear what the Americans will do today. I have not revealed the true contents of the day’s inauguration, of course, but I should be honored to help the country secure French support in the coming weeks.”

 _“Merci,"_ Jefferson drawls; it’s a stroke of luck the colonies’ French ambassador is as friendly to their whims as Lafayette, and better yet that Lafayette is as popular in France as he is in the colonies.

Lafayette steps back from Jefferson, nodding in satisfaction. For the first time, his eyes flick sideways, lighting anew with enthusiasm upon landing onto Madison.

“Mister Madison!” Lafayette exclaims, greeting him with the same French custom. “Ah, but of course! You and my brother never seem to be far from one another, _non?”_

The phrasing is perfectly ambiguous, but Lafayette hides a wicked intellect behind his warmth, his effusiveness. Lafayette knows something. The only question is how much.

“I simply find myself drawn to intellectual equals,” Madison deflects, which on the surface sounds like a diplomatic enough answer—but both Jefferson and Lafayette pick up on what Madison’s really saying, which is: _if I removed all the idiots from my sight, I would be left surrounded by very few people._ John Adams has said as much aloud before, and he and Madison are sometimes more similar in personality than they like to admit.

Lafayette laughs, smiling brightly.

“Yes, yes. Well, all the better for your partnership!” He looks to Jefferson. “Perhaps the three of us may toast to today’s victory tonight?”

“Tonight isn’t good. Rain check?” Lafayette’s face screws up; Jefferson explains. “Meaning: let’s find another date?”

“You Englishmen and your idioms,” Lafayette scoffs, shaking his head. “But, ah, if that is the state of affairs, then yes! I will call you later.” He glances over their shoulders, spotting someone. “And with that, I must take my leave. I leave the two of you to it!”

And he’s gone as fast as he arrived with a swish of red velvet.

Jefferson’s brows rise. When he breathes out, they at last fall.

“I never understand how one man can have so much energy,” Madison murmurs as he watches Lafayette descend on Baron von Steuben with a flurry of rapid-fire French.

“Mm. Cocaine?” Jefferson suggests.

Jefferson rolls the ring around in his pocket as he watches Lafayette swirl away and decides to ask him to be a groomsman. In adulthood, at least, he and Lafayette have gradually worked their way towards something like friendship, if not quite kinship. After all, they have many things in common.

 _Like the neglect,_ Jefferson always wryly thinks—not that they discuss that part.

“Mister Secretary, Mister Chief of Staff, the Cabinet’s on in five,” a frazzled young man tells them.

Jefferson’s fingers curl around the ring in his pocket.

The rest of their lives start today.

* * *

Washington goes onstage first; Jefferson and Madison follow close behind, filing towards the middle of the stage, lining up a dozen yards back from the podium at the front of the stage.

The crowd is immense, bigger than any he’s ever seen. A million? More? It has to be more.

It’s impossible to tell.

Jefferson’s heart catches in his throat as Washington steps forward, the flag pin on his lapel glinting in the light.

It all feels like a dream.

“Secretary Jefferson, if you will,” Washington’s voice rings out.

And, in that moment, everything he's sweated, bled, and suffered for is worth it.

This is one of the last moments in Jefferson’s life when everything still makes sense. He’ll hold onto this memory with bruised, bloodied fingers, return to it dozens and dozens of times in the years to come looking for some scrap of comfort. This is the moment where everything is perfect—where he has his friends, where he has his career, where a future so bright he can barely stand to look at it.

(Ten minutes—that’s all it takes to wash away twenty-nine years of sweat and blood and sacrifice).

But in this moment, everything is perfect.

Jefferson flashes a smile so white and wide that he already knows Adams will give him shit for it later—not that he cares. He holds his shoulders back and saunters forward. At the podium, he smooths the front of his suit—an unnecessary gesture, since he’s checked a dozen times that there’s no creases—and then looks down at his spidery, meandering cursive and begins to read.

“In Congress, July 4, 2011. The unanimous Declaration of the fifty United States of America…”

The words drip like honey out of his mouth, slow and golden and sweet. Jefferson basks in them, never hurries through, wants to savor this moment for the rest of his life. He wants to savor this entire day, savor the moment he drops to one knee, savor the first time he and Madison hold hands without fear of the public eye. His life is laid all out before him, and the future is so bright it hurts to look at.

“In every state of these oppressions…” Jefferson reads, distantly aware of some trouble with the sound system—some kind of backfiring sound speaker. There’s a disturbance of some sort well in the back of the crowd, thousands of people back. Jefferson does his best to ignore it. Whatever it is, security will handle it. “…our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.”

It takes him all of one minute to realize that security isn’t handling it.

Somewhere nearby, sirens wail.

Jefferson reads on, the words falling easy and practiced from his mouth even though he’s no longer looking at his notes; he’s watching the wave of people rushing away from something, moving in frantic currents. The currents rise and swell, growing closer, travelling through the crowd until Jefferson can hear panicked shouts rising up and around him like an incoming tide.

“We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,” Jefferson finishes, but the expert inflection in his voice is gone, replaced by hollowness.

Washington yells something from behind him, but Jefferson can’t make out the words. He’s frozen, stock-still as he stares straight ahead. The _pops_ are deafening. The sirens are deafening.

And then the screams are deafening.

Jefferson sees.

“ _My God,”_ he swears, his voice little more than a horrified whisper.

The screams swell around him—not in front of him now, but around him, behind him.

 _The Cabinet is behind you_ , he thinks.

He can’t make himself turn around.

Red fills Jefferson’s vision.

 _What the fuck,_ he thinks, unjustifiably calmly. In front of him, people are tearing each other apart. People are dying. People are going down, screaming, running, trying to fend off bat-shit crazy, blood-soaked attackers, and Jefferson’s standing there wondering _what the fuck_ as casually as he’d say _oh, it’s cloudy out, I should grab an umbrella._

(Someone’s screaming behind him, and he knows the voice, knows who it belongs to, but he refuses to look. Can’t make himself look. If he doesn't look, maybe it'll all go away).

Gunfire explodes around him.

Jaundiced-eyed, bloody-faced people start to rush the stage, and—a hand wraps around his arm, forces Jefferson to look away. It’s Madison, eyes wide, panicked, splashed with blood.

“Thomas,” he pleads. “I need you with me. Please, Thomas, I need you here.”

It’s the right thing to say: Madison always knows the right thing to say.

“I’m here,” Jefferson gets out, and just like that, he’s aware of his heartbeat hammering viciously in his chest, of the blood in his mouth from where his teeth have cut through his tongue, of the scene around them. He's in the moment, adrenaline coursing viciously through his veins, sending his pulse hammering into overdrive. “Jesus, fuck, oh, Jesus fucking Christ—"

Jefferson spins around, spots what’s left of the Cabinet huddled in the center of the stage, sees half a dozen of the bat-shit things in the way. Between yellowed faces, he meets Washington’s eyes for just a moment.

 _“Run!”_ Washington yells, his voice cutting clear through the screams.

There are any number of things Jefferson could’ve done differently.

When all is said and done, he thinks of them all.

He could’ve fought his way through. He could’ve navigated through the attackers. He could’ve waited, let everyone left alive catch up, gone with the motorcade.

And Jefferson knows in his heart that the outcome for everyone would’ve been the same if he did any of those things. He knows that everyone still would’ve died when the Redcoats took them out—himself included.

But the price he pays when he runs is that he lives on knowing that he only made it out alive because, at the front of the stage, at the moment when everyone needed him most, he froze.

* * *

Jefferson’s mother dies when he’s eight. The death barely registers on him—he’s been off at boarding school for three years already, at camp in the summers, hardly writes home more than once a month.

He’s flown home for the funeral, which, as a typical eight-year-old, he finds terribly boring. By the end of the service, he's read his way through half the Bible from the pew in front of him out of lack of anything better to do.

Jefferson doesn't even remember what anyone had to say about her.

Years later, when his father dies during his first year of law school, Jefferson realizes that it falls to him to plan the funeral, even though he and his father haven’t spoken more than a hundred words in the past year. He has to take a week off class, goes home. When the police call on him to identify the body, it’s the closest he’s come to date to someone else’s mortality: his father was dignified in life, but not in death.

( _Just as unreachable, though,_ Jefferson thinks, surprised as always that he’s still bitter over the neglect).

But his own mortality?

Until twenty-four, his own mortality is a distant, far-off concept.

At twenty-four, a drunk driver side-swipes him off the road while he’s on his way up to the Schuylers’ for the weekend, sends his car skidding and flipping ass-over-ankles until it wraps around a tree.

He’s concussed halfway into a coma, and his collarbone’s snapped clean in half. His nose is so fucked it takes two surgeries to fix, and whiplash gets him so hard he’s snapped into next week, but the ambulance comes fast after the crash, hauls him off the hospital—not that he’s conscious for that part.

The only thing he really remembers about the whole thing is waking up in a sheer-white room, thinking he’s dead—and then wishing he was dead half a second later as he cries out in pain, tears welling in his eyes.

“Thomas?” a voice by his bedside asks, a shape suddenly sitting up and leaning over.

He never forgets the way Madison says his name.

* * *

“Don’t look,” Madison begs him when they run.

 _Don’t look,_ Jefferson tells himself. _Don’t look._

He looks.

John Adams is still alive, but only in the loosest of senses. A halo of blood spreads around his head, and glazed-over eyes stare blankly. There are other bodies _—_ so many bodies _—_ but he sees only Adams. 

He doesn’t ever know if Adams sees him.

He doesn’t even get to say he’s sorry.

Not to any of them.

Not to John. Not to Washington. Not to Lafayette.

(Do they know? In the last moments, do they know?)

_I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry._

* * *

Jefferson doesn’t stop to process. If he processes, he’s going to slow down, and if he slows down, what happened to the people in the crowd, to the Cabinet, to the people around him now will happen to him. Jefferson's world narrows to a tunnel of the things in front of him, to the things directly around him. He blocks out everything else, blocks out the people dying a dozen feet away.

“We need to get off the street,” he says in a voice that he doesn’t recognize as his own until Madison looks back.

Something hot and wet sprays Jefferson’s face. He knows it’s blood, but he refuses to figure out where it came from. It’s not his blood, and that’s what matters. Madison's face twists with horror.

“Yes, absolutely,” Madison agrees in a single rush of air, and they round a corner—then turn to run the other way.

The crowd is so thick, people rushing through the streets. Madison gets jostled away, and Jefferson barely manages to hang on. Someone charges Madison, gets too fucking close, and Madison doesn't see in time—Jefferson swings so hard he’s almost certainly cracked a couple knuckles, but the pain doesn’t register.

They try to cut through an alley, but screams echo on the far end before they make it through. They swing around—but now there’s screams from the end they just came out of.

“Which way do we go?” Madison asks, stepping backwards until he’s pressed flat against the wall, eyes wider by the second. He’s clearly reaching his limit, panic starting to set in now that they’re no longer moving. He breaths hard, fast, but it's hard to tell whether it's from asthma or something else. “He’s—they’re… Thomas, I don’t feel well. I feel incredibly unwell.”

The last syllable’s barely out of Madion's mouth before he doubles over, throwing up. Jefferson hardly hears any of it, certainly isn’t in a frame of mind to respond—he just searches frantically until he finds something, some way out of here. He sprints to it—a manhole cover in the middle of the alley. They need to keep moving, keep from getting cornered.

The manhole cover is nearly impossible to grip, almost breaks his fingers a dozen times over before he finally manages to lift it a few inches off the ground—just in time for the crazies to round the corner, charge them with a feral shriek. Jefferson drops the cover, racing to intercept it before it gets to Madison—but it gets to Madison first. The threat brings him back to earth, and smooth as butter, Madison sidesteps, dodging at the last possible second, kicks a heel into the creature’s knee. The force knocks it sideways, face-first to the ground—and as it begins to get back up, snarling and snapping, Jefferson takes his heel to its skull, bringing it down hard again and again and _again_ until it’s reduced to twitching, gurgles that trail off into nothing.

Jefferson steps back, chest heaving. His eyes slowly widen.

His shoe is wet. Soaked through with blood. Squishes when he steps back.

The weight of what he’s done starts to descend on him, cuts through his defenses, his refusal to think about what’s going on. He sways a little on his feet.

“I think I killed it,” Jefferson says—and with that, his lunch comes back up.

He wants it to stop. He wants the screaming to stop. He wants to go home. He wants to—

“Come on, Thomas, I need you to help me with the manhole,” Madison says, desperately cupping his face, forcing Jefferson to look at him. “I need your help, Thomas. Can you help me?”

“Of course,” Jefferson replies, dazed, stumbling back to him.

Madison gives him the last bit of strength he needs, and, together, they toss it aside.

Jefferson looks down into the dark, and, as the smell rises to greet him, if he hadn’t already emptied his stomach thirty seconds ago, he would now.

Screams follow them down. 

* * *

Jefferson doesn’t think. He refuses to. He doesn’t have to.

He puts one foot in front of another, and that’s enough.

The tunnels are pitch-black. The only light comes from the screen of his Blackberry and from tiny circles of the sunlight floating through the holes in manhole covers and roadside drains over their head. He and Madison hold onto each other like they're terrified of being separated and refuse to let go. In some places, the sewers widen to passages tall enough to stand with walkable pathways along the sides of the sluicing fluids. In other places, they narrow to tunnels that the two of them have to crouch to crawl through, wading through sludge Jefferson will sooner die before he thinks about. They don’t know where they’re going. They just picked a direction, and they’re trying to stick with it. It’s too dark to tell where they’re going beyond that.

He doesn’t think.

That isn’t to say he doesn’t register. He registers the screams. The gunfire. The ground as it rattles with explosions. The death. The smoke. All of it, mere feet above his head.

One foot in front of the other.

There will be time to think later.

 _It's a good fucking thing you're in shock,_ some distant part of his mind suggests. _Or you'd be pretty fucked right now, huh?_

Which makes sense. What’s supposed to have been the best day of his life has easily turned into the worst in under an hour. He doesn’t know what’s going on. He's seen people die. His friends die. He doesn’t know where his surviving friends are. He doesn’t know what this means for the country. What this means for the future.

What he does know is that he’s still alive, that Madison’s still alive, and that’s just got to be good enough for now. Everything else will have to wait.

One foot in front of the other.

His phone rings in his hand once. He flinches, surprised, almost drops it. Then he looks at the name on the screen. The phone rings again. And again.

He answers.

“Thomas Jefferson speaking,” he says, his voice flat.

“Th..a..? T…mas?” the voice crackles—and between thick, vicious bursts of static, Jefferson can just barely pick up a French accent. “Please, T…as. Tell… you… hear me.”

Jefferson can't force out an answer, so Madison takes the phone out of his hand, holds it between the two of them.

“Lafayette?” he asks, as desperate as Jefferson's ever heard. “Lafayette, we’re here. Talk to us.”

“Ma…iso…?”

“We’re in the sewers. Where are you?” Static. “Lafayette, can you hear us?”

“I am… Washingt…on… hea… away. Redc—”

“Lafayette?” Jefferson asks, at last finding his voice _—too late_.

There’s an abrupt burst of sound that Jefferson only registers as a scream three seconds later.

Metal shrieks. Metal scrapes. People scream.

The screams are so much better than the absolute silence that follows.

The call clicks dead. Madison calls back once, twice—but there’s no answer.

On the third try, someone picks up.

“De…ead...only…he… hurt...p… hel… help. I’m… ‘m so…rry…” A shuddering, hurt sigh. “Plea… no. Please.”

Static bursts, deafening and, somehow, sickeningly final.

(And doesn’t it sound just a little too loud, a little too patterned to be static? Doesn’t it sound a little too much like gunfire? Don’t the voices in the background sound not sound French at all, not even American, but British?)

“Lafayette, quit fucking around.”

Yelling: Jefferson thinks he hears Washington’s name. Thinks he hears Lafayette’s.

“For fuck’s sake, Lafayette. Talk to me.”

Lafayette doesn't talk, but Jefferson believes he hears him scream.

On July 4th, 2011, The infected kill most of the Cabinet; on the King's orders, on orders to contain the disaster, contain the disease, the British get nearly all the rest.

“Please. Say something.” Jefferson’s eyes screw shut, but he's still holding back his mind, trying to keep himself together. “Anything.”

The line clicks dead.

Jefferson doesn’t think.

(But he does).

* * *

Jefferson was never there for Lafayette growing up.

And maybe it’s not his fault—he was bounced around from boarding school to boarding school the second he turned five, sent off to summer camp so he wasn't home outside of the school year, never came home except for the odd holiday or unless it was election season and Peter Jefferson needed the perfect family photo op: father, mother, son. Smiling. Always smiling, even though Jefferson felt as comfortable around them as he did any stranger off the street. But in the photos, they smiled.

A happy, perfect family.

But Jefferson wasn’t there those last few moments before the call drops, and, later, when the dust has settled, he’ll come to believe that much is his fault.

* * *

_Drip-drip-drip._

_One. Two. Three._

_Drip-drip-drip._

They turn into a passageway where the sluice is filled with fasst-flowing drainage water instead of sewage, and it rushes forwards, roaring. The passageways are flooded here, slick, and Jefferson and Madison grab ahold of each other’s shoulders to keep from slipping, getting sucked into the current. They follow the rushing water until Jefferson's knee deep, Madison’s almost in up to his waist. A hand digs into Jefferson's shoulder so Madison keeps his balance, and the man's other hard clutches a sharp, rusty pipe running alongside the wall. It's July, but the water's freezing cold, and they shiver so badly before long that standing alone starts to grow hard.

The sound of roaring water grows later until they finally round a corner to a passageway filled with light—natural light, not the blue-light glow from Jefferson’s phone.

At the end of the passageway sits a massive circular grate through which the water filters. Trash and debris are caught between the bars, clogging the way, but they push forwards anyways, shoving aside empty bottles and soda cans and whatever else crosses their path. It’s no worse than everything else they’ve already walked through.

( _I think I need a new suit,_ Jefferson's mind supplies, a thought so wildly incongruous with the situation that it nearly sends him into a fit of hysterical laughter; he holds it together by an inch).

They look through the grate, down to the Delaware River rushing below.

“Well,” Jefferson says after a moment, shoulders rolling back. He tries to smile, but he knows he fails. “How’d you feel about going for a swim?”

* * *

They don’t look back.

Philadelphia is burning, but they don’t look back.

If they look back, they’re not moving forward.

(Clouds of smoke rise behind them, swirl through the air, make it impossible to see, sting their throats, send Madison into a wheezing fit. They find their way to the interstate leading away from the city: a nightmare. It’s grid-locked: people in cars scream as the infected smash through their windows, drag them kicking and screaming and crying out of cars, descend on them with arterial sprays).

Jefferson and Madison find another way.

Jefferson’s shoes blister his feet, but he and Madison keep moving, never stopping, never slowing. It’s hours—nearly nightfall—before they reach the hotel they were at this morning.

The parking lot is half-empty; half the other car owners seem not to have been so lucky.

Bloody tire tracks mar the asphalt. The windows to the lobby are smashed, blood-spattered. Corpses litter the lot—some torn apart, some run-over, some half-dead, still moaning, crawling slowly towards the two of them. Madison watches horrified as one progresses towards them. Its legs are crushed, bent, twisted-out at odd angles. It drags itself forward by its nails, seemingly oblivious to the streaks of blood smearing the ground behind it as it goes. It doesn’t the pain it must feel.

It doesn't notice anything.

Its face is twisted in hatred, mind lost to hatred, nothing in its bloodshot eyes except anger and hate and violence. If there’s such a thing as a soul, this one is gone. It’s not even able to speak, not when Jefferson vainly orders it to stay back—he has to _try—_ and not when it doesn’t, continues its deathly slow progress towards them.

“Let’s just go,” Jefferson tells Madison, pleading.

Madison doesn’t even look at him.

“What are these things?” Madison asks, and to anyone else, the brittle tremble in his voice might go unnoticed—but not to Jefferson. “Am I dreaming?” He looks to Jefferson, desperation flooding his face as he searches for some confirmation it isn't real. “I haven’t woken up yet,” he tells himself, but denial makes him no calmer. “I’ll wake up in Monticello. I’ll get dressed. I’ll—" Jefferson sweeps forward, wrapping Madison into an embrace, trying to keep them both from crumbling into a thousand pieces.

“I’ll be fine. Everyone will be fine,” Madison recites, but the way he holds on to Jefferson reveals that he doesn’t believe any of it at all.

* * *

Six years earlier to the day, July fourth, 2005, finds Jefferson waiting for the results of his first election. He’s at what’s either a celebration party or a consolation party, but as people come and go, as the numbers on the TV screens change, he feels like an observer to it all.

It’s been the most emotionally draining year of his life.

(Madison, waltzing back into his life like he owes Jefferson nothing, not even an explanation for his four years of absence, radio silence. The constant, nonstop campaigning: the numbers crunching and the funding games and the long, long hours in hotels. Angelica: their breakup. Jefferson, still going on like he feels great, like he’s not so damn exhausted he thinks he'll cry if he has to flash one last smile for the cameras).

“I’m so sorry,” he suddenly tells whoever’s talking to him; he hasn't looked at their face the entire conversation. “I don’t feel well. Please, excuse me.”

And with that, Jefferson leaves.

He can do nothing else; the results will be what they are.

(He’ll win, he knows. Madison will win with him. They were both predicted to come in with a seven-point lead over the candidates closest to them.)

Jefferson turns off his phone, gets in his car, and drives.

He doesn’t even know where he’s going until he gets there.

( _The beach,_ he thinks, _of course)._

How is that he can’t fucking escape James Madison? How is that when Jefferson’s just begun to think he’s done with him for good, their lives intertwine again?

 _A mutually beneficial arrangement,_ Madison said nearly twelve months earlier when he approached Jefferson about running a joint campaign. _We’re too ideologically similar to run directly as opponents. If we pool our resources, we’ll have a better chance at taking down the incumbents._ He'd paused, then tried for a brittle smile, said _you and me against the—_ and Jefferson cut him off there, agreed to the proposal in a flat voice. 

Jefferson can’t believe he agreed. He can't believe he spent the entire campaign next to his fucking ex-boyfriend, the one that broke his heart and left him to pick up the pieces on his own. What the fuck possessed him to agree to spending his career next to James Madison in that moment he agreed is beyond him.

Salty air stings his face; Jefferson thinks.

It’s been five years since he last came to the beach.

He was with Madison then.

(In his memory, Madison laughs. Smiles at him like there’s nothing wrong. Kisses Jefferson like they’re as in love as Jefferson believes. What changed in those two days after their trip ended? What changed between them and the call Jefferson got dumped?)

The horizon slices through the sun. It's a gorgeous sunset.

Pastels: lavender, rose, cornflower blue.

When the sky drips and melts red, Madison finds him.

* * *

_When it rains, it pours,_ Madison once told him, wry, smiling.

Jefferson weathers the storm. He weathers Philadelphia.

Weathers making it back to Monticello, finding nothing but smoking ruins, his house burned to ash.

He weathers his lost future, weathers everyone’s deaths, weathers the death of the nation.

And, weeks later, his hand slides into his pocket and knocks into something cold and round and metal that he’s forgotten he even still had.

 _You and me against the world,_ the engraving reads.

Jefferson thinks.

(He remembers).

A red sunset: forgiveness, reconciliation, love.

(He remembers).

A borrowed tie, a tasteful flag pin, a crushed velvet suit.

(He remembers).

A halo of blood around John Adams’ neck, a vainly bloodstained flag, a crushed velvet suit brightened to bright red by bullet holes.

Jefferson thinks, and he falls apart.

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me in the comments or on my tumblr (where i also post DOAN memes and updates): [cyanspica](https://cyanspica.tumblr.com/)


End file.
